Stocks' sell-off worsens as Wall Street wonders how much pain Trump will accept for the economy

Pedestrians pass the Broad Street subway station on Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)

NEW YORK — The U.S. stock market’s sell-off cut deeper on Monday as Wall Street questioned how much pain U.S. President Donald Trump will let the economy endure through tariffs and other policies in order to get what he wants.

The S&P 500 dropped 2.7 per cent to drag it close to 9 per cent below its all-time high, which was set just last month. At one point, the S&P 500 was down 3.6 per cent and on track for its worst day since 2022. That’s when the highest inflation in generations was shredding budgets and raising worries about a possible recession that ultimately never came.

• Live market data on BNNBloomberg.ca

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 890 points, or 2.1 per cent, after paring an earlier loss of more than 1,100, while the Nasdaq composite skidded by 4 per cent.

It was the worst day yet in a scary stretch where the S&P 500 has swung more than 1 per cent, up or down, seven times in eight days because of Trump’s on -and- off -again tariffs.

The worry is that the whipsaw moves will either hurt the economy directly or create enough uncertainty to drive U.S. companies and consumers into an economy-freezing paralysis.

• Canadian, U.S. markets plunge Monday amid trade confusion

The economy has already given some signals of weakening, mostly through surveys showing increased pessimism. And a widely followed collection of real-time indicators compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta suggests the U.S. economy may already be shrinking.

Asked over the weekend whether he was expecting a recession in 2025, Trump told Fox News Channel: “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.” He then added, “It takes a little time. It takes a little time.”

Trump says he wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, among other reasons he’s given for tariffs. His Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has also said the economy may go through a “detox” period as it weans off an addiction to spending by the government. The White House is trying to limit federal spending, while also cutting the federal workforce and increasing deportations, which could hinder the job market.

The U.S. job market is still showing stable hiring at the moment, to be sure, and the economy ended last year running at a solid rate. But economists are marking down their forecasts for how the economy will perform this year.

At Goldman Sachs, for example, David Mericle cut his estimate for U.S. economic growth to 1.7 per cent from 2.2 per cent for the end of 2025 over the year before, largely because tariffs look like they’ll be bigger than he was previously forecasting.

He sees a one-in-five chance of a recession over the next year, raising it only slightly because “the White House has the option to pull back policy changes” if the risks to the economy “begin to look more serious.”

“There are always multiple forces at work in the market, but right now, almost all of them are taking a back seat to tariffs,” according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

In response to the market sell-off, White House spokesman Kush Desai noted that a number of companies have responded to Trump’s “America First” economic agenda with “trillions in investment commitments that will create thousands of jobs.”

Trump met on Monday with tech industry CEOs, but the event was closed to the news media. He remained silent about the sell-off through the day.

The worries hitting Wall Street have so far been hurting some of its biggest stars the most. Big Tech stocks and companies that rode the artificial-intelligence frenzy in recent years have slumped sharply.

Nvidia fell another 5.1 per cent Monday to bring its loss for the year so far to more than 20 per cent. It’s a steep drop-off from its nearly 820 per cent surge over 2023 and 2024.

Elon Musk’s Tesla fell 15.4 per cent to deepen its loss for 2025 to 45 per cent. After getting an initial post-election bump on hopes that Musk’s close relationship with Trump would help the electric-vehicle company, the stock has slumped on worries that its brand has become intertwined with Musk. Protests against the U.S. government’s efforts to cull its workforce and other moves have targeted Tesla dealerships, for example.

Stocks of companies that depend on U.S. households feeling good enough about their finances to spend also fell sharply. Cruise-ship operator Carnival dropped 7.6 per cent, and United Airlines lost 6.3 per cent.

It’s not just stocks struggling. Investors are sending prices lower for all kinds of investments whose momentum had earlier seemed nearly impossible to stop at times, such as bitcoin. The cryptocurrency’s value has dropped below $80,000 from more than $106,000 in December.

Instead, investors have bid up U.S. Treasury bonds as they look for things whose prices can hold up better when the economy is under pressure. That has sent prices for Treasurys sharply higher, which in turn has sent down their yields.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury tumbled again to 4.22 per cent from 4.32 per cent late Friday. It’s been dropping since January, when it was approaching 4.80 per cent, as worries about the economy have grown. That’s a major move for the bond market.

All the uncertainty, though, hasn’t shut down dealmaking on Wall Street. Redfin’s stock jumped 67.9 per cent after Rocket said it would buy the digital real estate brokerage in an all-stock deal valuing it at $1.75 billion. Rocket’s stock sank 15.3 per cent.

ServiceNow fell 7.9 per cent after the AI platform company said it was buying AI-assistant maker Moveworks for $2.85 billion in cash and stock.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 155.64 points to 5,614.56. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 890.01 to 41,911.71, and the Nasdaq composite sank 727.90 to 17,468.32.

In stock markets abroad, European indexes largely fell following a mixed session in Asia.

Indexes fell 1.8 per cent in Hong Kong and 0.2 per cent in Shanghai after China said consumer prices fell in February for the first time in 13 months. It’s the latest signal of weakness for the world’s second-largest economy, as persistent weak demand was compounded by the early timing of the Lunar New Year holiday.

___

AP Business writers Matt Ott, Elaine Kurtenbach and Josh Boak contributed.

Stan Choe, The Associated Press